Thursday, November 29, 2012

Figuring Out Death

All
religions, all humanity have pondered death.It’s the greatest mystery, the reality that all of us must confront and
yet usually ignore until the inevitable becomes painfully obvious.

The
question becomes particularly poignant this time of year, both because of
winter when all plants in the northern climes seem to die and the landscape
becomes bleak, and because of the continued belief that the world will end this
December.

Recently,
four scientists who have examined consciousness and near-death experiences were
interviewed on a TV show about what death really means.Naturally, they did not agree.Science requires facts, evidence that can be
reproduced in a laboratory and can withstand close scrutiny.Such evidence is hard to come by with such an
amorphous subject like death.

Koch

One
of the scientists believes nothing happens after a person dies. Christof Koch,(left) the chief scientific
officer of the Allen Institute of Brain Science and the Lois and Victor
Troendle Professor of Cognitive and Behavioral Biology at California Institute
of Technology, said, “You lose everything. The world does not exist anymore for
you. Your friends don’t exist anymore. You don’t exist. Everything is lost.”

Koch
didn’t convince Bruce Greyson, professor of psychiatry
at the University of Virginia, who said that “if you take these near death
experiences at face value, then they suggest that the mind or the consciousness
seems to function without the physical body.”

In
the same vein, Dr. Stuart Hameroff, a physician
and researcher at the University Medical Center in Tucson,
Arizona, said his research opens “the possibility of life after death,
reincarnation and persistence of consciousness after our bodies give up.”

Alexander

Then,
neurosurgeon and author Eben Alexander (right) added, “I have
great belief and knowledge that there is a wonderful existence for our souls
outside of this earthly realm and that is our true reality, and we all find
that out when we leave this earth.”

All
of them can’t be right.

This
is all we know:

(1)Some
people who nearly died claim to have seen long-dead relatives or been drawn to
a bright light or, on occasion, met some religious figure.However, not everyone claims such
experiences.Some people said nothing
happened; indeed, they had no awareness of the time between the dying and being
reviving.

That implies that the post-death events
are not consistent, which makes little sense since humans have the same basic
anatomy and, hence, should share, similar post-death experiences.That’s why some scientists dismiss near-death
experiences, arguing that they result from internal brain reactions =and not
from an external source.

(2)The
universe will end someday.It will
simply exhaust all available energy.At
that point, nothing will survive, on Earth or anywhere else.In essence, none of our experiences then have
any meaning beyond an immediate time period.On that basis, heavenly life in a nonexistent universe is simply
implausible.

If life on Earth has no meaning, what
possible meaning could life in heaven have?

(3)No
evidence of a soul has ever been discovered.Photos showing something leaving the body simply turned out to capture
the gap created when energy stops being generated by a once-living person.

Besides, souls must be invisible.As such, all souls must be blind since light
would pass right through such an individual, and we need to capture light to
see.Heavenly beings, therefore, must
use canes.

(4)People
do claim to have lived previous lives and have shown precocious knowledge of
forgotten events.On the other hand,
serious research could uncover the same facts.Moreover, the effort to visit “previous” lives, called regression, is
spotty at best with false memories abounding.The “memories” seem real, but can be shown to be completely erroneous.

(5)No
one can imagine himself not existing.That would imply existence continues after death.However, many animals are aware of self,
too.Does that mean, they, too, have an
existence after death?Where does the
process end?Or, is post-life simply a
continuation of life?If so, why bother
with death?

Under
the circumstances, it’s possible to go back and forth on this issue without
ever reaching a clear consensus.Besides, without any real facts, it has to be all conjecture anyway.

Christian heaven

That’s
where religion enters the discussion.True believers have no doubts, depending on the pap they’ve swallowed
from different faiths. For example in Christianity, the faithful go to heaven;
nonbelievers are punished in Hell.The
same is true in Islam, except those rewarded are Muslims.

Both
can’t be correct.

In
that case, however, they are on par with any science poking into this dark and
unfathomable mystery.

Long-time
religious historian Bill Lazarus regularly writes about religion and religious
history.He also speaks at various
religious organizations throughout Florida.You can reach him at www.williamplazarus.net.He is the author of the famed Unauthorized
Biography of Nostradamus; The Last Testament of Simon Peter; The Gospel Truth: Where Did the Gospel
Writers Get Their Information; Noel:
The Lore and Tradition of Christmas Carols;and Dummies Guide to Comparative
Religion.His books are available on Amazon.com,
Kindle, bookstores and via various publishers.He can also be followed on Twitter.

You
can enroll in his on-line class, Comparative Religion for Dummies, at
http://www.udemy.com/comparative-religion-for-dummies/?promote=1

About Me

During his career, Bill has been a newspaper reporter, magazine writer/editor, advertising copywriter and writer/editor of NASCAR programs, among other jobs. He has won three international awards for stories and programs while working for International Speedway Corp. and was named 2000 Florida Feature Writer of the Year.
He has published four books to date and his writing has appeared in hundreds of local, regional, state and national publications.